The Burden of Strength: Why Women Deserve Space to Grieve
International Women’s Day is a day of empowerment. A celebration of resilience, courage, and strength. But here’s my question:
What if you don’t feel strong?
What if, in this moment, you feel tired? What if you're exhausted from holding everything together?
What if you’re grieving—whether it's a death, a transition, a loss of identity, or the slow shedding of an old version of yourself?
What if, instead of “pushing through,” you just need space to BE?
Strength, as We’ve Been Taught, is a Lie
Words that come up for me in response to this: Messiness and Range.
As women, we live in a male world that teaches us that strength is about endurance. Holding it together. Keeping things neat and linear. Strength is seen as the ability to carry the weight of the world while still being "okay"—or at least working toward being okay.
The patriarchal culture in which we exist teaches that strength is about keeping emotions in, “keeping it together; strength is about generally being (or at least acting) OK; strength is about working towards “getting better”.
But feelings don’t work that way.
Emotions are not linear. Life is not linear.
The thing about feelings (and let’s be real, life in general) – is that it is MESSY. There's no order to it. Change, grief and loss are chaotic. They are unpredictable.
One moment, you're fine. The next, you're in pieces. Ten minutes later, you feel steady again—until something reminds you of what you lost, and suddenly, you're free-falling.
It is a full range of emotions—joy, sorrow, relief, guilt, love, anger, numbness, fear, gratitude, jealousy, uncertainty, anxiety, numbness… these emotions oscillate depending on the moment, the context, the support system, the brain chemistry, and lots of other scientific and emotional reasons that I won’t go into.
And yet, here’s the rub:
We live in a culture that wants things clean and structured. Society doesn’t know how to hold space for the messy kaleidoscope of contradictory emotions that come with being human.
So what can we do?
What if the System Doesn’t Want to Change?
One of my favorite therapist jokes goes like this:
“How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?”
The answer?
Just one. But the lightbulb has to want to be changed.
And so, we have to ask ourselves: Does the system actually want to change?
(Big question right? I notice my heart swell when I think about this question because I am so daunted by the bigness of even asking.)
OK, so if I’m being honest – I don’t think the system wants to change.
And I’m devastated to say that I don't know that you and I (we, as a whole) – can change a system that doesn’t want to be changed.
Do you feel the weight of this? I do.
I feel the resistance, the friction of a world that expects women to hold everything together.
I feel loss. When I, too, am in the depths of grief, feeling alone as a wife and mother with no support – I find myself asking… Why on earth can’t the system meet me? Why isn’t there more space for what I am feeling? This is such a messy process- I don't know how to “hold it together” for my family, or my partner, or my boss… and I don’t want to HAVE to hold it together, damn it.
I believe that most women in the thick of grief, most women who feel like they are drowning in the alone-ness, feel it DEEPLY.
I believe that I am not the only woman who sometimes desperately wishes that our system would shift to include the softer, mushier, messier stuff that makes up our day-to-day life – all the “emotional” parts of being human that we all shove aside, in order to put on the professional or confident face that we feel we have to present to the world.
The broader culture has got a lot of momentum and inertia and avoidance when it comes to staying the same. It’s hard, if not impossible, to change what doesn’t want to be changed.
So… where do we go from here?
The Quiet Act of Rebellion
The short answer is: Even when you and I as individuals can’t change the whole system…
We still can. We change one person at a time. Moment by moment- we start with each of us.
First, I invite each of us as women to acknowledge the truth:
Yes, strength means enduring the messy range of emotions.
Yes, your grief is valid, real, and worthy of space.
And no, society will not always give you the room you deserve to fully feel.
And then we do the work anyway.
We make space for feelings and grief and uncertainty and doubt and fear… in the small corners of our lives.
We make space for it in our families at the dinner table.
We make space for it at happy hour with our girlfriends.
We make space for the messiness of those feelings in our own hearts, with as much love and lack of judgment as possible.
And maybe—just maybe—this work ripples outward.
Maybe, if we as women hold this space fiercely and consistently enough, the next generations—our children, our children’s children—won’t have to fight so hard to be seen in their full emotional range.
Maybe, one day, emotions will be recognized as a part of our strength, rather than something to hide.
And until then, we hold space for each other.
Because even if the system doesn’t want to change, we can still choose to honor the full experience of what it means to be human.
Do you want to join the rebellion?
This post is the start of a series. A conversation about what it means to be a woman who is fully empowered to be herself and move through the world without judgment – from others… or from ourselves.
I invite you to join me in this quiet act of rebellion.
Maybe today is the day you take a stand, and ask yourself:
Have you ever felt like you had to “hold it together” when you were falling apart?
What does strength actually look like to you?
How can we start creating more space for ourselves and for each other?
Change starts with conversation, and conversation starts here. You and me.
I invite you to answer these questions for yourself — and submit your thoughts here.
In upcoming blogs and on the podcast, I’ll be sharing anonymous responses so we can all come together as a collective (with individual, unique experiences)—because this is too big, too important, to navigate alone.
Let’s start the conversation.
And if no one has told you yet today: You don’t have to hold it all together.
I see you. And that is enough.
P.S. Holding space for yourself is an act of power. If you’re ready to carve out that space, click here to check out ways you can be in connection with yourself and others.